Kevin Feige Was Behind Hugh Jackman’s Original Wolverine Hairdo

It turns out that Kevin Feige had a hand in creating a key element for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, arguably the most important character in 20th Century Fox’s stable of Marvel characters. Nowadays, of course, Feige is better known as the head of Marvel Studios and the man responsible for crafting the hugely successful Marvel Cinematic Universe, featuring characters like the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

While working as an assistant to producer Lauren Shuler Donner on 20th Century Fox’s first Marvel movie, X-Men, Feige was made an associate producer, due to being a “walking encyclopedia of Marvel.” During the same year, Feige was hired by Avi Arad as his second-in-command at Marvel Studios. Feige took over as president of the company in 2007. As the head of Marvel Studios, Feige has overseen the release of 17 inter-connected films, including four movies that grossed over a billion dollars: The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Captain America: Civil War.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Feige recalled his time working on the set of X-Men and talked about how his knowledge of the source material influences his films. While making X-Men, Feige insisted Hugh Jackman’s hairstylist to bring the sides of his hair up higher and higher, until the stylist finally decided to give Jackman “big-ass hair.” Though the style was more “ridiculous” that they what they were initially going for, it was look that more closely resembled the character’s comic book appearance, which was Feige’s intention:

I never liked the idea that people weren’t attempting things because of the potential for them to look silly. Anything in a comic book has the potential to look silly. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make it look cool.

Feige’s influence on Wolverine’s look in the films managed to stick for several more films, as the character can be seen with a similar hairstyle in the movies that followed, such as X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and X-Men: Days of Future Past. However, the style has evolved over the past several years, and was toned down in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine. The look was dropped completely for Logan.